Pride vs Growth

This episode looks at how pride holds us back from growth. Sometimes, the thing holding us back isn't lack of talent or opportunity, it's pride. Without even noticing, pride shows up in our creative process and blocks us from expanding further with our ideas... Growth usually means letting go of how we want to be seen. But in a world where social media dominates our day-to-day of people sharing the end result, it's hard to persist in any creative journey without our pride being stabbed.

Chapters

• 0:00 intro
• 0:25 updates
• 5:42 pride...
• 6:21 pride & perspective
• 6:53 starting something new
• 7:45 when pride appears
• 10:42 power vs force
• 15:17 we need difficulty
• 17:06 staying 'comfortable' breeds pride
• 18:09 social media & pride
• 21:48 our brain needs difficulty
• 22:38 our focus is our biggest asset
• 24:13 pride vs ego
• 24:52 false sense of accomplishment

Transcript

 We are back still getting used to like introducing myself. It's so weird, but. Anyway, it's been a while, at least for me. I have not sat here and recorded myself, I think in two months. Like that is crazy. Like so crazy. Also, my hair is so wet right now and it's just rubbing against my ear and it, yeah, I've just been watching newly words for like this whole morning.

Like I've had these slowest morning, it's not even morning anymore. I've just had the slowest start of my day because I've had so much updating to do with, um, newly wise, which is now. Um, nearly, nearly parrots. Oh my God. I am literally obsessed with them, like, so obsessed. But I could talk about them forever, so I'm not, um.

Updates. Updates. Updates. So the last time I was here was the last time I recorded an episode was I'm pretty sure before my first guest episode. And it went so well. I was actually really nervous for like my first like guest episode and like to actually have like my face also be recorded. Like it's a whole different experience I guess.

But I. Loved it. I literally prefer it so much. There was kind of like something in me right now that has. Recently that has just been postponing just me sitting down and recording. And I dunno if that's just because I've got an out of flow with it or if I just prefer having guest episodes. But yeah, and if you haven't watched, um, if you haven't watched Beginner's Flow, I highly recommend it.

It's more of like an interview between me and Dante. I'm interviewing him about his brand lifestyle and for context. I have always just looked at his brand and I've loved the stuff that he's been making and doing, and I don't know, I guess it kind of just like clocked me that I want to turn this into like an actual podcast where like I am interviewing people and where we're actually having very interesting conversations.

So he was literally the perfect guest. It could not have gone better. I highly, again, highly recommend to watch it, is my favorite episode. I watch it over and over again. It's on YouTube and on Spotify and yeah, so. My next guest I actually have next week, which I'm also really excited for. Very different to Dante, but nevertheless, still amazing.

I think we have a lot that we're gonna like talk about. And the other thing that I'm not really quite sure of, um, of what I wanna do. Because I have so many topics that I just love to talk about, just things that interest me and I dunno if I am going to start like showing these episode ideas and then saying who's interested to talk about it with me.

Or if I kind of am going towards more of an interview of what do you do? Like what's your creative process? Or maybe it could just be a bit of both, to be honest. It could literally be a bit of both. Why not? I have this whole page, two pages of episode ideas that I would want to talk about, and recently I've just been filling up that page with just like titles because like there's just no more room to write.

I haven't actually decided what I want to talk about yet, and my mind is kind of going more towards pride and like how pride is a disease and how it's just bad to be like. Dominated by Pride. Then there's another episode called Create Your Own Lane, which I kind of know what I wanna talk about in that.

And then there's autopilot part two, which is out my eye. Oh my God. I have this like brightening serum that, oh my God, I have this not brightening serum, this like vitamin CI don't know. And every time it gets to my eye, 'cause obviously I put it on my face and like I'm like rubbing my face and whenever it gets in my eye, nine out of 10 times, it actually always gets in my eye.

It hurts so much. Anyway. I think I should just get straight into it because I don't know if anyone's actually gonna be listening until this point. Okay. I really wanna talk about pride, to be honest with my eye. Just if, if this was a visual podcast, oh my God, I can't see from one eye right now. I don't, I don't know how this has happened.

Like I was fine. Oh my God, it like hurts. I'm dripping down with tears right now. Oh my God. Okay. Ow. No, no. I literally can't. I can't. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe I just don't recall today. What the hell? Okay. I mean, I'm trying to like be more myself on here as well, so I don't know if that's like. If people are just gonna like turn it off and be like, who the fuck is this bitch?

Like, why does she keep on talking about brown and stuff? Like, we don't care about your eye, but. It's just such like a change. Like I'm just thinking back to my first episode and it was like, it was it, like there was no conversation. I mean, I was just so nervous, I think, and I was just like making sure that there's like a proper plan of this episode, what I'm gonna talk about.

It was very like. I don't know, like that's just like the, anyway, so the reason why I wanna talk about pride is because I feel like we all have pride. And also this is something that I talked about with Dante in our last, in my last episode with him, but we only touched on it kind of briefly. I just think that it's something that dominates.

Our whole entire life. And sometimes we're just not aware of it. And like sometimes we just think that things are such a big deal when they're just not. And I think that's where our pride comes in. We all have some levels of pride, and I think that's because we all are born with an ego. And an ego obviously comes from the fact that like we own.

A level of self-awareness when we like compare ourselves to other animals. Other animals don't typically have enough self-awareness to build an ego and to build pride like the world doesn't revolve around them. Uh, I think I spoke about this in one of my previous episodes because we own a perspective.

Our perspective makes the world revolve around us because like we just see life through our own eyes. So 8 billion of us just see the world revolving around us, and that's where ego comes from and that's where pride comes from in some sense. And the thing that I relate to Pride with is when we're starting something new.

Doing something difficult and everything that we start new or everything that we learn to do, there's, we're learning it because we lack the knowledge or understanding of it. And I feel like if we are undisciplined in learning or yeah, if we are undisciplined or if we haven't trained ourselves enough to be used to learning things or if we just like have.

Built. Yeah. If we just built like a bad relationship with learning, I think pride comes from a level of insecurity and I, I think pride manifests in so many different ways, and I think one of them is just insecurity. The second one is maybe just like not being disciplined enough to. Be able to sit with the uncomfortableness of learning something because pride only shows up in like those difficult, vulnerable moments.

I don't think it's so apparent to us of how much pride we carry until we're like forced to see that, and I think that we see pride. I think the moments that we see pride the most are when we're trying to achieve something new. Achieve or learn or just grow in some way, just do something challenging, whether that's just with career or like.

Personal growth or in a friendship like maybe I feel I see a lot of friendships just end because like one person or the other is too prideful to like show some sort of vulnerability and help something. I don't know. It manifests in so many different ways and it's just something that I'm so fascinated about because I said in the previous episode.

I remember this statement for me so well. I said, I don't wanna say human flaw because it's so harsh, but it's definitely something that gets in the way of our potential. I wanna take that back, and I literally wanna say that that is a complete human flaw. Pride is a complete human flaw. I think if we weren't so prideful, if we weren't so power hungry.

'cause we're all power hungry. Like we all want to, we all want to feel some sort of power in our lives. We don't want to feel like everyone is in control of us. We want to feel like we're in control of, in control of our lives. And because of that, maybe we, I don't know, what am I trying to say? Like maybe we all just have different.

Relationships with pride because of that, and like depending on our past experiences. It just shows like what level of pride we have. I've always been someone that has found doing something that requires learning and patience. Quite difficult. Like I'm just thinking back to like my younger, younger self.

I'm still young, I'm 19, but I'm thinking back to like my younger, younger self where I was Farsi, so undisciplined with work and like I just couldn't. I don't know. I just, I never had a good relationship with like academics and like I never got good grades and I never got good grades because I never wanted to work because when I did work, it kind of humbled me and that's where pride comes from.

And I think a lot of us have that kind of relationship with pride. I mean also because like I'm just not academic in general and my focus with that is just not amazing. I've always just been. I've always just been a bit more artistic. When I started tapping into that later on, I realized that like, wait, I actually love this, and like I'm all here for it.

So it's, it's so difficult. Like, it's so difficult and like, how can we actually deal with pride as people? If pride shows up, what do we do with it? Because I think it's such, it's such a powerful feeling. It's such a powerful motion. Um, I remember reading this. Book called Power versus Force is actually really interesting.

It's a really interesting concept. I don't know if I like fully like understood, understood it. It was like one of my first big books that I've read. Not that I found it that interesting as well, but like the concept itself really in like really interested me. So this guy, I think he studied. Human consciousness his whole entire life.

And he basically said that we are all like, we're all determined by energy, but he doesn't say it in such a spiritual, religious way. Like he, he backs us with like scientific. Evidence. So that was just his whole career for his whole life. Like he just, he commit his whole life to just studying human consciousness.

And I'm so fascinated about it because I'm someone that like, is not spiritual yet. I have so much interest in that kind of field. And he's the only guy that I really look up to because he doesn't make it look all like goofy and like weird and like hear some tarot cards and like whatever. So. He said like we're all determined by emotions and like just like our consciousness and we all radiate on some kind of consciousness.

And then there's one page, like a double page where like he just shows the whole map of consciousness and he shows that anger is like level 1 5 0 and like he knows this 'cause he's tested people in like an. In like an angry state. They're always in an angry state. This machine like gave out some energy signals and it was, it's fascinating.

Um, and he said like, only 2% of the world have ever gone up to like feeling joy. And joy is like level like 900 I think. And. None of us are on there. Like the average person is on level 200, which is like pride and courage, and he said that we only move a couple numbers up or down in our life. Like we, it's so rare to go from like 200 to like 900.

It's fascinating. And it's like, it, it measures like our state 24 7. Not when we have like angry moments, not when we have like joyful moments. It's like. How we are 24 7. The title Power versus force comes from his main idea, that not idea, just his main like study that when we feel like we're powerful, when we actually know that we own power, we don't force anything.

To come, like, everything just happens naturally because we, it, it's, it's a whole weird thing. Like it, everything happens because we feel content and like we are powerful and we don't force anything. And, and real power doesn't come from force. Whereas people that don't feel powerful enough are the people that.

Are so forceful in their lives, and it just instantly makes me think of pride because I think the people that are the most forceful are also the most prideful. And I think pride at the end of the day comes from a subconscious belief that there's like, that we are not powerful. And like that we're not, not powerful, but like we're quite insecure in some areas or I don't know, it like, it like triggers something, so we want to put this prideful mask.

But when I think of someone that is prideful, I mean, we all are, when I think of moments where I, where my pride appears like. It all stems from like some sort of insecurity and like some kind of need for me to like put this prideful mask on to like make people think that in that moment I feel powerful or maybe even like just with myself.

So it's interesting with this power of us as force concept that. Pride just comes out of insecurity and pride. I feel like pride is something that we all need to experience. I don't think that it's something that we have to live with. Like I don't think it's there to stay with us. I just think a lot of us find it easier to stay.

With this like facade of, I don't know, and like concede it with pride because, I don't know, I just feel like a lot of people don't believe in themselves as much as like they should. And that lack of belief just manifests in like having to conceal that with people. And that's where pride comes from and that's where this whole like power versus force comes from.

If we actually feel content in ourselves, if we actually feel confident if we. Actually are able to humble ourselves in difficult journeys with, I don't know, just any kind of difficulty. I really think like we all need to experience that because if we're unable to be in a difficult situation, then for some reason we can't.

Confront this difficulty and like maybe it just makes us feel weak and maybe that feeling of weakness doesn't sit well with us. And then that's where pride comes from to conceal it. And like I always relate everything to this podcast, but I really think it's just made me who I am today. And like it's, that sounds so cringe.

Like I just said that out loud and like I'm literally creasing it myself. But it was the most humbling moment. And I remember before that I was so prideful, but I think that was because I just haven't tried anything and like just trying something kind of. Fussy scared me and like I was scared of like being judged and like, now that I've kind of said, fuck this, like I'm just gonna do this now, I've kind of accepted that I don't want to be sitting in this throne of like, oh, whatever I don't try won't hurt me.

So like, I don't, I'm not gonna feel like humbled if I don't try. It was a, it's like, it's still a humbling process. Like I'm trying to, right now I'm trying to like post like short clips on TikTok, on Instagram. There is nothing that is like going viral at the moment and it's painful, like dedicating days, weeks, months.

Like I've loved it, I've seriously loved it, but like I have big dreams of where I want to take this and every day just like not seeing the results. It's a slap in the face. But at the same time, I love that I'm in this difficult journey because at the end of the day, it actually gives me something to look forward to and like I actually feel like.

I'm growing with this and like my confidence is growing with this and my pride has gone so down. I feel like everyone that doesn't just take, take a leap of faith or like just take a step out of like their comfort zone, their box of safety, their bubble is always going to be somewhat prideful because like if we are in that place then we haven't tried anything to humble us.

And then like also the lack. Of doing nothing will make us naturally feel insecure. So we would have to like conceal that with pride. I think pride, oh, I think pride just comes from like stagnation and. Also like the delusion of, oh, like, I haven't like done anything and like nothing's humbled me and like, we don't know this, but like, that's where pride comes from.

Like we all, we just think life is so easy, therefore like we just know everything. But wait till we actually try something and the second we try something, we're like, oh no, fuck this. Like this is gonna destroy my pride. And this is why I think it's such a human flaw, because pride really determines how much we are willing.

To take the risk to like take that step forward. Our pride almost makes us like so weak to. Difficulty. I don't know. I think also, I just think today it is kind of, it's easier and harder in a way to like start something quite like difficult. I would say it's harder because we have, we constantly have eyes on us, like we're always following people on social media and like everyone can kind of constantly see and know what we're up to.

Even if we don't post regularly. I just think. Social media in general, like the ability to text people and call people all the time and like spread rumors and like gossip and just talk about people. That has kind of made it harder for like any of us to just feel like we can do whatever we want without consequences because there's always that thought of like, oh, what will people say?

It's so easy to like speak to people in that sense, but I also think it's easier because of how well connected everyone is and how much people are posting on social media. But actually also I found it so difficult and I think TikTok and Instagram have started making it harder because so many people are going viral.

So many people so successful on TikTok and it's gotten to the point now where like they actually, I actually think they've changed their algorithm and I spoke to one of my friends about it, I don't remember who, but she was like. She was like, yeah, it's just unfair. 'cause like imagine, um, like this random 14-year-old girl is just like getting viral and then there's like a small business based like in London, um, and they can't go viral.

So like the algorithm has changed and like. In a way that's made it harder. But like apart from that, I don't know. There are always pros and cons to these things, but I think we've all become so much more prideful, like our generation has, because from like a young age, we've just been so open to these influences and these people that are living their best lives that are like getting the best skin products and they only document like.

The outcome of their hard work. And so we want to portray ourselves in the same way, like subconsciously, because they make us feel like we should. And anything before that is just like embarrassing because they don't document it or like, I don't know, I'm not saying like with everyone, but if you think about it in general, social media is all about like showing the end result and, and so when it comes to actually starting something new, it's just.

Especially now the most humbling process because we're like, what? Like I didn't realize this is actually difficult. Like I thought we'd just get in front of a mic or like, I don't know, everything, just, everything's so kind of gross tinted on social media. Not everything, but everyone just loves showing the end result and it's great.

And it's like everyone deserves to show off the end result 'cause of all the hard work. But people that are just watching probably think, oh, this is so easy. Like I wanna be living their life. Because we never see the process. We just almost become allergic to it. Like we're like, what the fuck? No, fuck this.

Like this is not what I've been seeing. This is not what I want. Like I want this. But we don't realize that like to get this, we need to like bend over backwards. So yeah. But then I also feel like if we're not doing something difficult and if we're not being challenged, we are just gonna get so. Sport and everything that we do have, which is great, we're just gonna take for granted, and we're just not gonna feel so fulfilled.

That's why like going back to difficulty, I think we all need some difficulty because it's the thing that is really keeping us on our toes. It's the thing that makes us feel grateful for where we are and make our like journey more meaningful. Like difficulty is really healthy for us. Not to sound like a need for saying this, but we always need to be developing ourselves and we always need to be like challenging ourselves and our mind always needs to be absorbing new things, otherwise.

Like it'll just start deteriorating. Like our brain is literally a muscle, and the way we train it is by going through difficulty. And I feel like because that is literally a fact, and if we don't actually go through difficult things, then Farsi will we'll just be so bored and like everything's just gonna be so artificial.

And I think. If we're at that point, then we'd probably also have too much pride and our MA and our actual brain muscles would probably not be trained enough to actually feel like it can absorb new things and like new challenges, which is very interesting. I don't know. It's so interesting because like.

Social media has so much information and there's just so much free, like knowledge just out there that we can absorb. There are so many people that are showing, that are putting themselves out there and just showing like their lifestyle, their healthy lifestyle for us to benefit from, like for us to like take on board.

So we literally have the option of consuming like really healthy, important things. But the, the flip side of it is that. It's just such a complete distraction from reality. And I've been saying this for a long time, but I really think that like our world and like our society is going through this kind of like divide because I don't know, I mean this is kind of getting like, I dunno.

But I don't know. I just feel like in the past, education was heavily dependent on people's income and because social media is just accessible to a lot of people, I wouldn't say everyone because there are people that don't even have access to phones and stuff, but 80% of our population do. And there is so much free education.

There is so much like good that is being put out there that it's, it's not like how it was in the past where like you'd kind of have to pay for like all of this like knowledge, like it's all free. And that's why I think like we're all going through a divide right now because time and our focus is the most important asset for us.

Yeah, I don't really know. Like I, it's just, it's such an interesting topic, pride. But like, is pride the same thing as like having a big ego? I don't know. And I also always used to think that like having or owning a big ego was or is a bad thing. And like I've had people come up to me be saying like, you have a big ego, but like, and I'm, and I would get offended and they'd be like, that's a good thing.

Like you just have like a strong character. But for me, like I'm like, I don't wanna have a big ego, like I want to be seen as someone that doesn't. But I guess I kind of view ego and pride to mean the same thing. Maybe a big ego manifest could manifest like pride. I'm gonna stop this and if I have more ideas, then yeah.

Also, I actually do just wanna add, I just stopped this episode, but um, I knew like I stopped this for a minute because I knew I'd have more ideas coming. I just went on TikTok casually just like to check out. Um. Like my platform on there, the podcast one. And I have like, I was just on it for three seconds and I see this really good looking girl being like, I think this is a summer song.

And it's like her lip syncing to um, what's the song called? Like show me Love, like I. Like that one. And I just wanna add this is I think this adds to our pride and like this false idea of success because so many people could literally just like take their phones out, lip sync this song, post it on TikTok, like do nothing.

No extravagant effort and get like 5 million views or like something like that. And that will naturally play on our psychology and be like, oh my God, like everyone's liking me. Like everyone's doing this. But we haven't actively tried to do anything. And not to say that I'm against that. Like I think it's so cool that like we can just blow up on TikTok over this like song.

But it definitely adds on to our pride and like our, like the difficulty. Of

trying like something difficult because we're so used to. Just getting that round of applause. Social media has kind of made it easier to receive validation. Even like when we all post something, all of our friends are gonna be commenting like unbelievable, unbelievable. And we're all excited to post. And I'm not trying to like throw shade on it because I love it.

Like I literally love a good post and like a good comment and it's incredible and it's so nice and it makes us all feel really good. But there's obviously a downside if we're so reliant on it. Because it will just, it gives us like a, for a sense of like validation, a sense of like accomplishment and when we actually.

Do something that doesn't give us that accomplishment, that doesn't give us that validation. Our pride will be the first thing that will be hit by this, and that will be targeted, and that will just get like the biggest slap in the face. So it's just so interesting to me. I, I could talk about pride for days and days and days.

I just feel like I can waffle so much about it. So I think I am just gonna end it here, but. I wouldn't be shocked if I do come back and say more, but also if I don't, then I've actually really enjoyed recording this episode. I really, really have, and I hope you guys have enjoyed listening to this too. I'm really excited for my guest episode next week and, yeah.